snowflakes
by zxanthe
Summary: basically a dumping ground for various oneshots of all lengths and pairings. tales of heartbreak, love, AUs and mischievous cats can all be found lurking somewhere inside this thing.
1. then suddenly cats

**A/N: **_yet another eremika reincarnation au…but this one has a twist. I decided to rename them because they're reincarnated and honestly what is the probability of them having the same names in the first place? ah, who am I kidding, it's just a fluffy little drabble. enjoy. :)_

* * *

He has a cat now. Connor's not sure how he feels about that.

That afternoon, he'd decided to skip class, because if he had to hear _one more word _out of that prick Aaron's mouth, he was going to punch the guy in his stupid horsey face. He'd been sprawled across the roots of the oldest, most gnarled oak tree in the park when he heard a plaintive-sounding mewl and sat up to behold a cat, black-furred and gray of eye. A sick, starving creature, barely able to stay on its feet. He had taken pity on it at once and fed it.

Bad idea. After that, the little guy followed him _everywhere_, even slipping inside the classroom to curl, purring softly, in his lap. Naturally, it didn't take long for Aaron to notice and start fucking _commenting_ on it, so this time Connor lost his temper and punched him squarely in the nose. He regrets _nothing _about that particular incident (it was satisfying as hell, actually), although he told the cat sternly to stay the fuck outside (and had to bodily toss it out the door on numerous occasions) after that. Even so, he'd catch it lurking outside on the windowsills, watching him with that stern gray gaze.

He wonders, though, as he strokes the cat's silky dark fur beneath the gnarled old oak tree, if it's normal for such a creature to show this particular degree of devotion to a human. After all, in his experience cats were finicky little assholes who didn't give a single shit whether you lived or died, as long as they got fed. This was a more doggish behavior, although he didn't think that even a dog would show this degree of loyalty to someone they've only recently met.

In the end, because it's not going away and he might as well name it, he decides to call the cat Shadow. When he tells her so, she purrs and licks his nose with her rough pink tongue. Connor would never have considered himself a cat person, but somehow, slowly…he's warming up to the idea. "Stop it!" he laughs, as Shadow bats at his face with soft fuzzy paws.

Yeah. Definitely warming up to it.


	2. broken ribs, broken hearts

She can feel her ribs breaking. Through the black splotches blooming ever larger across her vision she can see the titan's gaping mouth, red and hot and wet. She wants to scream, but she can't find the breath. Her heart is beating a million miles an hour and all she can think is _nonononono_-

"SASHAAA!" someone screams. And then the pressure is gone and she hangs suspended in space until the ground slams into her back, hard. Her teeth slice through her tongue and she can't breathe and she can barely see and there is only ringing, ringing, ringing where the sounds of the battle should be. She knows she should get up, that lying down means death, but _oh God it hurts can't breathe it hurts it hurts_...

Tears leak from her eyes. She's failed.

"Sasha," says someone very far away, and then she's being pulled apart. She screams, or tries to, but all that really comes out is this awful choked gurgle.

"You'll be okay. You'll be okay, Sash, you hear me? You'll be okay, you'll be okay, you'll be okay."

_Connie_, she thinks, as his face looms above her, blurry, shifting. She draws a breath to say his name, but instead she's rewarded with _pain_. Her chest explodes in red hot fire. Something is stabbing her, something's not right, oh God oh God oh _God_. She can only whimper her agony.

"Stay with me, c'mon Sasha," Connie says. "I've got some potatoes stashed back at the barracks. I know how much you love potatoes. Just hang on. We'll eat them when we get back." His voice is shaking, she realizes, and then she can see his face clearer when he leans closer. She sees his wide wet eyes.

It hurts so much, but she cries anyway, because she'll never get to taste those potatoes, she knows that now. She coughs, and something warm and metallic slides up her throat, flies from her lips.

Connie's cradling her in his arms. She can feel hot tears dripping one by one on her cheeks, his or hers she doesn't know. Her heart beats faster, even though every beat sends a stab of pain through her body.

"Ah don' wanna die," she moans through her ruined tongue.

"You're not," says Connie, but his voice is cracked in a way she's never heard before. "You're not," he repeats, and then his lips are on hers. He tastes like sweat and blood and fear and desperation but his mouth is warm and his breath is hot and this just makes her sob all the harder because she's wanted this for a very long time. But she breaks the kiss before she wants to, with coughs and cries. Connie hugs her tighter. "I love you, goddammit," he says, and lifts her in his arms.

The world is a crazy blur of color and light and pain. Every step Connie takes sends a lightning bolt forking through her body, making her nerves scream. She fights to stay conscious because she knows that if she allows herself to slip into the sweet blackness creeping across her mind it'll all be over.

It'll all be over.

_The potatoes_, she thinks, but she can't taste them. It's just blood, blood, blood, filling her ruined lungs, bubbling up her throat, dripping from her nose. The blackness spreads like a fungus over her vision, thick and heady, and the last thing she feels is a sense of anguish so acute it's a wonder the whole world isn't screaming.

* * *

_ahh i'm really sorry this hurt to write_


	3. candlelight

he can feel her heartbeat. it makes her entire body shudder with its will, its force, its defiant vitality. in this dim place between sleep and wakefulness he can almost believe that it will never, ever stop and that she will be with him always, warm and solid and whole.

"_Let's get married,_" she whispered to him in that silent gray space between night and morning. he'd only sighed at that, softly (but in that quiet it was deafening). as he'd rolled out of bed he felt her eyes on him, sad and wistful.

she snores a little, a light rasp on every exhalation. her hair smells like sweat and horseshit and the smallest hint of something flowery. she has a mole on the inside of her left thigh and her smile is like the sun, bright and warm and real, and she somehow turns the disgustingly shitty coffee they're given into something resembling the actual beverage. she's one of the kindest, most loyal people he's known, always keeping morale up, always caring, always Petra.

he presses his lips to the back of her neck and curses the night he fell in love with her.

she'd had another nightmare, and so he'd sat across the table from her, like he always did. and he'd been watching her from the corner of his eye, watched the way the candlelight played among the angles of her face, watched how it made her blue eyes dance, her auburn hair shimmer, and something in the cold hard rigidity (except it wasn't, not really) that was his heart shifted ever so slightly out of place.

she hums and rolls over so that she's nose to nose with him, eyes half-open, still asleep but smiling. "Morning," she says, and kisses him, her warm cracked lips lingering softly, sweetly on his. he wants to push her away, he wants to make her smile like that again, he wants to fuck her. but he doesn't do any of those things, just lets her hang suspended in her dream for a few moments more before the heavy weight of reality settles once more on her narrow shoulders.


	4. is this humanity?

**ERROR CODE 405: LEG L AND LEG R UNRESPONSIVE. INITIATING SHUTDOWN SEQUENCE 12.5**

it doesn't have legs anymore, but that's fine, because they're gone, useless anyway. the bombs made sure of that.

**ERROR CODE 405: ARM L MALFUNCTION. INITIATING SHUTDOWN SEQUENCE 12**

no, it thinks, but too late, the power's gone. it supposes that it was for the best, because the very thing that gives it life could also bring it death.

**ERROR CODE 2000: SYSTEM MALFUNCTION. DAMAGE LEVEL 10 SUSTAINED TO LEFT ABDOMEN, RIGHT PROCESSOR CAVITY. INITIATING SHUTDOWN SEQUENCE 1**

first, the remains of its lower body. it wonders, briefly, if it fought bravely.

**05**

now the middle. they always said number 104 was the best of them all, but a little defective just the same.

**04**

it was never sure how to feel about that (were Soldiers supposed to feel things?).

**03**

its one remaining hand digs into the soft dirt. the arm hums and shudders as it pulls itself forward.

**02**

"My God," says the human, and it kneels in front of it so all there is to see are threadbare pants and then its eyes, gray, no, silver.

**01**

the first time a human touched it, it realizes it's never felt anything quite so warm.

/

**INITIATING REBOOT SEQUENCE: PLEASE STAND BY**

IT CAN FEEL EVERYTHING! THE KISS OF THE AIR, SO COLD, LADEN WITH FINE PARTICLES TO SCRAPE AND BURN ITS FRAGILE SKIN! IT CAN FEEL THE COLD SMOOTH METAL BENEATH IT, PRESSING AGAINST IT, SO HARD, SO HARD! THE CURRENT SINGS THROUGH ITS WIRES, (EXCEPT THEY CANNOT BE WIRES, THEY CANNOT BE!), AND WITHIN ITS BREAST DELICATE MACHINATIONS TURN AS SOMETHING BRIGHT AND COLD SHUDDERS TO LIFE WITHIN, PROPELLING IT INTO SUCH WONDERFUL AGONY AS IT HAS NEVER KNOWN!

_is this humanity? _it wonders, and it must be, because this is the only logical explanation as to why they cannot fight.

/

they lie together. it's not logical, but they do it anyway. this body isn't a pleasure bot's. there is nothing to gain from this interaction.

_except_, says another part of her brain, buried deep amid wires and metal and cold hard facts, _there is_.

he's so warm against her. his heat pushes its way past her soft outer shell and into the jagged and cold place that is within her. it makes the power cell in her chest shiver, it makes her circuits shudder. she can feel his own power source, his heart, pounding against his rib cage, straining to get out, nudging her chest cavity. because of that hammer in his breast he saved her, this reckless, illogical, unfathomable creature.

it's glorious. he's glorious. "Eren," she says, and his silver-gray eyes open. "Mikasa," he says, and smiles.

she presses her mouth against his, because she wants his warm breath to fill her.

/

his heart is quiet.

human hearts are not supposed to be quiet. ever.

but his is.

the body he built her is riddled with holes. the bodies of the strangers are broken and twisted. (she is a Soldier, after all.)

a pool of red oozes from the wound in his chest. warm, but quickly cooling. she dips her hand in it.

_this is the stuff of human beings_.

seventy percent water beneath the skin. if water somehow permeated her impermeable shell, it would mean the end.

"Eren," she says.

he doesn't answer. he always answers.

her body is shaking. this is illogical. nothing is wrong.

_EVERYTHING IS WRONG!_

"Eren!"

his silver eyes are open. they stare at nothing.

"EREN!"

is this humanity? this fragility, this ephemeralness, this strange red water? all she knows is that he's cold.

so very, very cold.

he's never cold.

oh.

it's like she's falling, which is strange, because she is crouched on solid ground. her body is shaking and heaving and clanking, which is strange, because her systems are perfectly stable.

she cradles him to her chest, this human, this illogical, dead human. she feels his blood smear across her front, cold, so cold, so cold, and in that moment she realizes that there is nothing, absolutely nothing that she can do to fix him.


	5. the fear, it consumes you

we are _absolutely terrified_.

we try to hide it with words and yells and dreams, but it's in the dead of night when nothing moves (nothing at all) that it emerges, shaking the body and causing sweat to make itself known on feverish skin. for some, it's hot and fierce, a monster trying to claw its way out of our throats and manifest itself as a loud and unbroken scream (but of course we can't do that, not when everyone is sleeping, so we bury our faces in our pillows mouths open thoughts crashing loud loud loud into one another and hovering above it all the knowledge that _I might die _tomorrow_ oh godohgodohgod_)

but for others, it's cold. it caresses our spines with sharp frozen talons and we shudder and sob oh so quietly into our pillows and think about what it will feel like to die. will it be quick? will our last sight be a pair of stained molars growing ever larger much too quickly; will we feel it as our heads burst open inside their mouths? or will it be slow? will we scream as our intestines spill bloody and steaming into the smoky air, will we cry as our flesh is consumed as we struggle against their unbreakable grips (_PLEASEPLEASEPLEASE OH MY GOD LET GO OF ME OH GOD GOD GOD_) and look into their eyes and _see _that sick, rancid glee? how does it feel to leave your body? what happens? where do you go?

we are supposed to be strong.

we are supposed to be brave.

(and we are, because there is no other choice, not here, not here)

but there are times when we don't see any _point _in this, times when all we want to do is escape the terror and the silence and the hell within our heads, what we've seen and done playing endlessly in a nightmarish loop that _we cannot turn off_, only shove away into some out-of-the-way corner of our brains.

(we are murderers)

we are humanity's last hope and we cannot crumble.


End file.
